Mind the Gap: Greenwich and the Globe Theatre-"All's Well That Ends Well"

Hi everyone! Another busy day has come and gone. Tuesday, around noon, I met our students at the Surbiton train station and we proceeded into London for our journey to Greenwich. Dr. Woods advised us to allow 1 1/2 hours to get to Greenwich from Kingston/Surbiton and he was right! We first took the train into Waterloo, took the Jubilee line tube east to Canary Wharf, where we changed to the Docklands Light Railway (a little, no a VERY little bit like the light rail in Charlotte), which took us to the heart of Greenwich at the Cutty Sark station. It was actually nice to be above ground in the light rail because we got to see the newly revitalized Docklands area with London's tallest building. We were due to meet everyone at the Visitor's Center at 2:00, so we arrived in time to grab a little lunch at the market.

We soon met Dr. Woods and Elly Bavidge at the center and began our tour of the Painted Hall and Chapel at the Old Royal Naval College. I asked Dr. Woods about the Cutty Sark and he pointed to a bunch of scaffolding and said, "that is it". It was almost completely destroyed by fire but hopefully will be restored by next summer. We then made our way through Greenwich Park and UP THE HILL to the Royal Observatory. As we are about to climb the hill we passed by a construction site where they are building the equestrian venue for the Olympics next summer. The Royal Observatory is the official location of the Zero Longitude line from where all the world's time zones are set. You actually stand in the Eastern and Western hemispheres at the same time. In the museum we saw the famous Harrison clocks which solved the 'longitude problem' in the early 18th century.

We climbed down the hill again and decided to take the Thames Clipper to Bankside Pier instead of going by more trains and tubes. It was a relaxing trip on a high speed boat that made several stops along the way but deposited us literally in front of the Globe...nice!

After a quick dinner, we walked across the street to the Globe Theatre. We watched a great performance of "All's Well That Ends Well" by Shakespearean actors in period costume, but with a sense of humor! - Shakespeare's humour (British spelling) of course.

The performance ended a little after 10:00 and we started our journey back to Surbiton Station. It is amazing how we always are able to find our way home no matter where we start! It was a great day!